Australia, exceptional in its brutality | Overland literary journal

I should mention that all journalists, human rights defenders and politicians against offshore detention have unintentionally been in line with this policy and the government’s purposes as they are playing a critical role in advertising the violence and exporting it to the globe. As they discover and come to understand the violence in these two wheel cages, Manus and Nauru, they advertise it on a regular basis. The government, in this tremendous advertising and political game, discerns what type of violence to examine, to produce and to export. Certainly, the most eye-catching headlines are the little children and women who have been raped, the burned body of baby Asha and the crushed body of Abyan, with their bodies the objects of debate in political dialogues in the Australian parliament.Somewhere beyond its borders and on the accursed Manus and Nauru Islands, Australia is currently producing and examining violence and advertising it to the world. Simply put, Australia wants to tell the world that for anyone who comes to Australia by boat, the destiny that awaits them is life in a hellish prison on one of these islands.Those of us stuck between are refugees, who remain bleak and defenceless, our lives exposed to the unconditional power of death in an indefinite form.Behrouz BoochaniDelta Prison, Manus Island, in the heart of the Pacific OceanTranslated by M from FarsiEdit by Janet Galbraith. Additional edits by Overland.Note: I have recently become aware of the work of Professor Suvendrini Perera from Curtin University in Western Australia, who has been writing on the ‘state of exception’ since the first implementation of what Australia has called ‘Pacific Solution 1’ and ‘Pacific Solution 2’.